There is a classic anxiety about technology: that it can lead to a lack of individuality and spiritual emptiness. Why might this be?
The place to start is with the lack of control technology can bring about in our lives. This may seem counter-intuitive since it is normally thought that technology is what helps us attain more control in our lives. Of course it does. However, while on the one hand technology is freeing and allows us not to have to labour to do basic things and meet basic needs, it also reduces our individuality, hence our freedom and control over our own lives. Horkheimer and Adorno see this dialectic clearly:
Technology has changed human beings from children into persons. But all such progress of individuation has been at the expense of the individuality in whose name it took place, leaving behind nothing except individuals’ determination to pursue their own purposes alone (Dialectic of Enlightenment p. 125).
We are so overtaken by technology’s ability to free us from basic things that we no longer feel the need to develop the abilities needed to create ourselves in a spiritually fulfilling way. With the world becoming smoother and smoother, we no longer face the necessity of having to struggle for creative expression; it is simply there for us. Creative expression now exists for us in a tamed, ready-to-use state. We click the boxes on Facebook profiles to establish who we are and who we are friends with (Is this really an act of self-creation? Are Facebook friends really friends?). Or, to take another example: MIDI devices that are now available even on smartphones (Are smartphones really smart?) allow us to easily and simply ‘create’ music – though the ‘creation’ of this music can only be invidiously compared to the creation of music with or for actual instruments.
In both Facebook and MIDI we see cases of ‘lock-in’ (Cf Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not A Gadget Ch. 1 & 2; and this YouTube interview on “Conversations with History“): we no longer have to struggle to learn an instrument properly or learn the different capabilities of instruments, and we are stuck with the discrete mathemitized notes (in the case of MIDI). We no longer need to work to express our individuality in new and creative ways and put in the hard work of building genuine friendships (in the case of Facebook). Self-creation is no longer a process of self-activity. We no longer have to develop our own powers or own capabilities through our deeds and actions, but instead simply purchase them or click a box.
This is not to say that there are no useful and helpful aspects of MIDI and Facebook. There certainly are. The issue is, rather, the real potential these devices have to conceal other possibilities because they represent the easier, more convenient way to attain a goal.
Second, having pre-made channels through which to differentiate ourselves leads to a sense of self-alienation and alienation from others. In turn, we become aggressive towards ourselves and each other. We start to feel the need to compete rather than individuate ourselves through creative acts. We are bored of our phones after four months because we need to keep up and out-do others in order to feel like individuals. We do all this through a savage control of ourselves rather than through spending our time and energy for the betterment of ourselves and others. We simply purpose our own ‘self-interest’.
Marcuse put it this way:
The technological rationality inculcated in those who attend to this apparatus has transformed numerous modes of external compulsion and authority into modes of self-discipline and self-control . . . . The crowd is an association of individuals who have been stripped of all ‘natural’ and personal distinctions and reduced to the standardized expression of their abstract individuality, namely, the pursuit of self-interest. As member of a crowd, man has become the standardized subject of brute self-preservation . . . . The crowd is thus the antithesis of ‘community,’ and the perverted realization of individuality. (Marcuse, “Some Social Implications of Modern Technology” pp. 148-150; Cf Hurbert Dreyfus, On the Internet Ch. 4)
The connection here to Hegel’s struggle for recognition (see episode 35 and 36) is obvious (Cf Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality; episode 23). We can individuate ourselves in to order gain recognition from the other through the competitive and self-disciplinary mode that is exemplified in the trend of people changing their phones after only four weeks. This ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ mentality, manifests itself in shame, envy, vanity and contempt.
What Marcuse seems to be claiming is that this way of trying to gain recognition from a crowd, das Man, simply alienates us from others. This is because we do not see each other as equals in a community. Rather, we simply see the other as someone to outdo, to be better than, or to catch up to. We do what everyone else is doing, simply to keep up or out do. It is not that we really want that new phone; our ‘want’ is due to mimetic desire – a desire based on a third term, viz., what the crowd does.
Again, we can see this in the standardization of expression that is linked to lock-in, as discussed above. It is not that these things can’t be self-expressive but rather that it is much harder for one to break out of the standardization these technologies implement (Cf the Pirsig episode on this issue). Take the simple shift from Myspace to Facebook as an example. Myspace allowed everyone to customize their own page, add music etc. Facebook is different. Facebook forces everyone to use the same layout, the same colours and systematically limits how and what individuals use to express themselves. Twitter seems even worse in this respect. It forces us to be part of the crowd and the pressure intensifies once everyone you know is using it – we become afraid that, by taking a break from it, we’ll end up missing something important.
This then leads to the pathologies mentioned above involving the spiritual emptiness of technology and our inability to differentiate ourselves in ways other than through aggression. This is partly because technology makes it more difficult for us – due to our laziness and cowardice – to think and create for ourselves. We can be easily lulled into using pre-established means to ‘express’ ourselves. The spiritual emptiness of these well-worn grooves leads to our inability to recognize others in their individuality – which we ourselves are unable to create. Others become a means to make us feel less alone (“I have hundred of ‘friends’ and ‘likes’ on Facebook”) and a way to enhance our own vanity (the ‘selfie’) and narcissism through the echo of ‘the daily me’ (Cf Cass Sunstein Republic.com 2.0 Ch. 1; also, this interesting talk by Simon Blackburn entitled “From the Self to the Selfie”).
The other possibility for recognition – the non-alienating possibility – takes place in a real community through genuine acts of self-creation. The recognition of the other as other, as the individual that they are/create. In this way we can achieve identity in difference. This is only done through each person developing themselves through experiencing unique and difficult situations.
The anxiety here, again, has a lot to do with how our ‘laziness and cowardliness’ will lead us to take the path of least resistance. The taking of these well-worn paths reduces self-activity and creativity and increases aggressiveness towards ourselves and others. Such increasingly numerous paths create a valueless desert landscape. So how are we supposed to really value anything if everything is increasingly the same, e.g., the eternal return of the same computer generated pop song. Nietzsche warned: “The desert grows: woe to him who harbors deserts!” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra “Among Daughters of the Desert” 2).
Adam Arnold
“This is not to say that there are no useful and helpful aspects of MIDI and Facebook. There certainly are. The issue is, rather, the real potential these devices have to conceal other possibilities because they represent the easier, more convenient way to attain a goal.”
I don’t think that technology should be antagonized in this way. I think that there are many things throughout history and presently that have the same effect on the person (such as a family arranging the social life of their daughter, acting in a certain way to your wife because you’re a ‘gentleman’, acting according to certain rules due to your job position). The issue is not technology, but in the way we abuse its use. It’s important to have an awareness the issues you discussed and strive towards overcoming them.
On Facebook, although limited in an aesthetic manner, we do have the ability to differentiate ‘friends’ by creating labels such as ‘close friends’. We can also create private groups to have discussions with just those people. I think also electronic music (although I completely prefer a traditional instrument, as it is easier for me to express myself with) can be used as a form of expression. Even using sampling techniques, like many hip-hop artists, is a use of technology in an awesome, expressive way. See Juggaknots – Trouble Man which uses John Coltrane’s My Favourite Things in a unique way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12Y-iVzo3H4
I guess I’m arguing that technology doesn’t mean we will go down the path of least resistance, or even be more likely. I know I’ve had more false conversations face-to-face with potential employers, co-workers, beautiful girls, etc. than I have had online.
Issac,
Thanks for the comment. You are right that does not mean we will go down the path of least resistance. There is no determinism here. As the open of my post says, I wanted to explore a classic anxiety. One that goes back to Plato, at least. I also agree that there are many other issues in human life that can cause similar problems. I would never deny that. Nor would I deny that there are people would are making creative, interesting and liberating use of current technological innovation. What I do claim is that technology is not all liberating. That technology has another face. My only intention was to bring out this other face and hopefully provoke some thinking about it.
Best,
Adam
New forms of technology, such as smartphones, can have an alienating effect on humans who are preoccupied with them. I’d like to thank Adam for raising awareness of this problem in a sensible and well-thought out manner; unlike the typical, aggressive, one-sided stance against new forms of technology. So often arguments are framed in a false-dichotomy. Its nice to hear the negative sides of a subject without the whole subject being framed in a negative way.
Isaac, I’m sorry you can’t talk to pretty girls without a feeling of alienation and falsehood 😛 (maybe as an effect of too many nights spent on the computer instead of true socializing?)
Very funny Sandra… but perhaps more true than I would like to admit. Technology does have an effect on our lives. Sometimes in drastic ways, and these effects can alter our personality and our ability to ‘discover ourselves’ (for lack of a better phrase).
I guess I don’t think that technology has a negative impact on our lives, it just makes our lives different. Its up to the user of the technology to prevent it from having a negative impact. There are some cases where its difficult to avoid – I get in a lot of trouble for never checking my emails, or even answering the phone from my current (if not for much longer) employers. I don’t want to carry a phone with me, but I have to if I want to compete in the marketplace.
Sandra,
Thanks for the comment.
Best,
Adam
Thanks for the post, Adam. I understand you as saying that, as super efficient technology colonizes more of the activities that used to provide our formative experiences, the space we each have in which to create a distinct “self” shrinks. I read Lanier’s book last week, and I’m going to try to get his newer one in sometime soon. I’ve thought more than once that he’d make a great PEL guest. I was surprised at how much philosophy there was in the book you mentioned.
His example of MIDI was an excellent one: a semantics confined to fixed modes of expression is precluded from the creative ambiguities that expand its capacity for meaning, and ends up leading to endless “mash ups” of the same content. He may have been a little too dismissive about some popular culture, but I think his basic argument stands, especially concerning the cases you describe with facebook, Twitter and the like.
Cowardliness and laziness definitely exists in the carrot aspect of the situation, but there’s also the stick (not that you were implying otherwise). Putting aside the fatigue of trying to keep one’s social presentation competitive (up to date with trends and marketing), the minimum requirements for social and civic participation are raised with every innovation. Increasingly, our governments, commercial entities, employers, friends and families all punish any attempt to opt out or failure to gain access to the most common and efficient means of communication.
So far I’ve avoided taking the smart phone plunge, but I’m already beginning to feel the way I did ten years ago when I was avoiding getting a checking account. There’s a lot of stuff I can’t do, which puts me at a disadvantage, mainly in the form of time I lose that others do not. Eventually, the cost will become too great, and whether I like it or not, I’ll be forced to either make major life changes or cede a little more territory to technology.
His example of MIDI was an excellent one…
Is it really?
All musical instruments are all pieces of technology which place constraints upon the user. My guitar has contraints, my mum’s piano has constraints, my wife’s saxaphone has constraints.
That doesn’t stop people doing amazing things with them. Someone with limited or zero musical knowledge is not going to get much joy of music software. It still needs someone to tell it what to do, and it still requires imagination and knowledge to make something beyond the MIDI version of chopsticks.
Anyone can go down to the store and by a guitar. Many, many people in fact have them. The great majority of them produce nothing more than a few plinks, or use them to catch dust. Just like the great majority of people with access to music software probably make a few beeps and then get bored.
The fact that the guitar is just an older piece of technology. Easy to pick up, but mastery, or even just competency requires a major effort.
The reality of Mash-ups hardly seems that much more sinister than the reality of 15000 guitar pop tunes that do little to differentiate themselves. It is not the technology that creates the limits.
Good composers turn out good songs on many different technologies. And as is the case, many lesser lights turn out mediocre, or downright vile songs, on exactly the same technology. MIDI is one of those technologies.
I find the idea similar to arguments I have had with people in that past about “real” music. The idea that some technologies produce real music, and others don’t. I say that’s just a load.
Anyway, I am reminded of this cartoon – (published online, not on paper. Does that invalidate it it somehow)
https://xkcd.com/1227/
Geoff,
You are right. All technologies have constrains. You are also right – as I said – these are classic anxieties. Plato said in the Phaedrus the following:
“And now you, being the father of written letters, have on account of good will said the opposite of what they will do. For this will provide forgetfulness in the souls of those who have learned it, through the neglect of memory, seeing that, through trust in writing, they recollect from outside with alien markings, not reminding themselves from inside, by themselves. You have therefore found a drug not for memory, but for reminding. You are supplying the opinion of wisdom to students, not truth. For you’ll see that, having become hearers of much without teaching, they will seem to be sensible judges in much, while being for the most part senseless, and hard to be with, since they’ve become wise in their opinion instead of wise.” (274e-275b, I discuss this more here http://msbwtofci.blogspot.co.uk/ if you are interested)
However, I do not a agree that technology does not create limits. before midi the idea of a musical note was just that, an idea. It was not exact and there was space to be imprecise. With midi devices there is an exact mathematical understanding of what each note is.
The issue is not about real music or not. There are some great songs composed with midi and sound exactly the same as songs composed before it. The issue is not about the product. The issue is about what happens to the people doing the composing. Does the ease of composing using midi corrupt the making process, making it so easy to compose that the individual is not force to develop their powers to over come difficulties? I think this is a real problem and it does cause anxiety. This is not a call for some neo-ludditism. Rather, it is a call to thinking. To think about technology in all its aspects not just its liberating ones.
Thanks for the comment.
Best,
Adam
“It was not exact and there was space to be imprecise. With midi devices there is an exact mathematical understanding of what each note is.”
It has long been more than just an “idea.” The mathematical study of music has been going on since the Pythagoreans at the least.
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_and_mathematics
Standardisation has been sought for many years – the tuning fork first made an appearance just over 300 years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuning_fork
And ultimately MIDI doesn’t require you to stick with those frequencies. MIDI doesn’t require that you use only those notes described in some canonical scale. Imprecision has long been used deliberately, and can be used by people using MIDI technology. You can sample whatever you want. Change it in whatever ways you want. Package it with whatever you want.
“Does the ease of composing using midi corrupt the making process, making it so easy to compose that the individual is not force to develop their powers to over come difficulties?”
No. I do not believe it does. I mean, why must composition involve the overcoming of difficulties? Why must composition be hardship, or involve suffering? And even so, the idea that these tools make the process easy seems to be a little absurd. Even using MIDI, composition is not just punching a couple of commands in to console and waiting for the genius to emerge. I have known people who compose on MIDI – they are musicians before they are computer technicians. Some of their songs are the work of months – sometimes even years. Not just a few minutes of punching commands into their mac book air.
One can quite easily compose a simple tune on a guitar – you don’t even need to no musical notation or theory in the slightest. Does that corrupt the process? Beethoven used to compose alone on a piano. My friends get together in a rehearsal studio and jam – compositions emerging from shared ideas and experimentation. Both are very different ways of composing. Is one of them a corruption of some pure form which composition is?
“I think this is a real problem and it does cause anxiety.”
I think the problem is illusory. It contains numerous unstated moral assumptions, and not just about composition. Creating music has always been done in many different ways – there is no one singular act “composition” that stands to be corrupted. Whether you do it with MIDI, or after a joint in the basement of your stepdad’s house, or on a harpsicord in your patrons salon, seems quite irrelevant to me.
Geoff,
Yes, you are right. There is an unstated assumptions going on here about (Emersonian) perfectionism! An aesthetics of self,, if you will. I think that it is very important in life – for life to be meaningful – to strive overcoming, for becoming, which I think can only be done through the struggle of developing ones powers. One of the most important being negativity as Keats would call it. I also think this is intimately connected with the possibility of having genuine relations with others (of accepting the other person in their difference). Obviously I cannot flesh out this conception here – that would take a book or perhaps a life time – but it is part of what underlines the anxiety I am speaking of. The worry I have is about technology making everyone more and more the same, merely numerical individuals, rather than the distinct, differentiated uniqueness of true individuality.
One thing which I do thing is being misunderstood here is you seem to interpret me as stalking about a right method of composition. That could not be further from my intention and in fact that is partly what I am anxious about. I do not think there is any sense to such a notion. The worry I have is that technology might lull people into one method. That is precisely the problem. I worry about technology moving from a tool to a crutch to a totality.
MIDI was just an example. I don’t want this to come down to this (perhaps badly chosen?) example. One that I took from Jaron Lanier. The worry behind it, and perhaps I did not express this in the best way, is that in MIDI technology it becomes very hard (impossible?) for the individual to manipulate the notes out of the binary. It isn’t about the standardisation of an idea – thought that is part of it – which can be manipulated or not followed at all. With MIDI devices you are ‘locked in’ to how the notes are computationalised in the device itself . This is not about whether it is right or wrong to use MIDI. Some people incorporate it into their creative endeavours beautifully. It is about how we see MIDI. It is just a tool, like any other. If used by someone it can be great. The worry is that technology uses us. We become its tool rather than maintain our grasp of it.
The issue, from my point of view, what I wanted to get at, is that technology can lull many people into being comfortable with its convenience. The real issue is about convenience and how that can stop people from risking failure. All creativity must risk failure. I think that is internal to creativity (artistic or otherwise). As Beckett wrote in “Worstward Ho”: “All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
Daniel,
That is a good point. There very much is a stick of technology. I know I experience this a lot since I decided to remove myself from Facebook. There are many times we information or party invitations go out on Facebook and then people are baffled that you don’t get that information. Everyone is expected to be online, to be on Facebook and check it as often as possible.
best,
Adam
Adam:
MIDI: “Because the cost of data storage in consumer products has dropped so much, MIDI music is more and more replaced by wave audio in computers, tablets and phones. MIDI connectivity and a software synthesizer is still included in Windows, OSX and iOS but not in Android.” Technology always replaces technology.
“This then leads to the pathologies mentioned above involving the spiritual emptiness of technology and our inability to differentiate ourselves in ways other than through aggression.” Yikes, this is obviously technology malfunction (wardrobe malfunction).
“Technology makes it more difficult for us – due to our laziness and cowardice – to think and create for ourselves. We can be easily lulled into using pre-established means to ‘express’ ourselves. The spiritual emptiness of these well-worn grooves leads to our inability to recognize others in their individuality – which we ourselves are unable to create. Others become a means to make us feel less alone . . . and a way to enhance our own vanity (the ‘selfie’) and narcissism.” Technology malfunction.
“We can achieve identity in difference. This is only done through each person developing themselves through experiencing unique and difficult situations.” Human function, perhaps including technology function.
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
. . . And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” [tribalism, agriculture, industrialism, technology, information, ?]
(William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming, 1865-1939)
Well done Adam.
Wayne,
Thanks for the comment.
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,”
Best,
Adam
There is a trend of people changing their phones after 4 weeks?
That is a real question, by the way.
Yes there is. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/10542550/Everything-connected-the-smart-home-in-2014.html
Thanks.
I give up on humanity.
Bored after 4 weeks? Smartphones aren’t there to entertain us, but to facilitate communication. As long as long as you’re communicating with intelligent, honest people, why would you get bored, even if you talking on a dial phone from 1975 or emailing from a PC from 2008?
Humanity has a lot of potential. I do not think giving up is at all the answer. I find the following comment by Adorno inspiring:
“Ethics is surely nothing other than the attempt to do justice to the obligations which the experience of this entangled world presents us with. Yet this obligation can equally take the form of adjustment and subordination […] and also the form which I would emphasise more, namely, that the attempt to take this obligation seriously consists exactly in changing what stops human beings in contemporary conditions – and I mean stops all human beings – from living out their possibilities and thus realising the potential contained in them […] I do not know positively what this potential is, but I know from all sorts of findings […] that the adjustment processes, which human beings are subjected to nowadays, lead to an unprecedented extent […] to the rippling of human beings [… W]hat I do know, is that today there are uncounted human beings, whose relationship to technology is, if I may use a clinical term, neurotic, that is, they are tied non-reflectively to technology, to all sorts of means to control life, because [their] purposes – namely, a fulfilment of their own lives and of their own vital needs – is largely denied to them. And I would also say that just the psychological observation of all those uncounted, defective human beings – and defectiveness has become, I might also say, the norm today – that this [observation along] justifies us in saying that the potential of human beings is being wasted and suppressed to an unprecedented extent by institutions.” (quoted in Freyenhagen’s Adorno’s Practical Philosophy)
Even in the dark boredom of people today we can see the potential that they have. They do have the potential to be better than this but the situation we find ourselves in stops this from happening. Partly this has to do with technology, partly with the job system and I am sure we can find other causes. However, there is still reason for hope. As long as people have to adjust to these conditions, as long as people still feel discontented the hope for a flourishing humanity is not yet lost.
Thanks once again.
My favorite Adorno quote (which I’ve never quite understood, but it does make me think):
“Wrong life cannot be lived rightly”.
What? Lots of ignorance here.
There is no fixed “mode of expression” that MIDI requires of anyone or anything. “Natural” sounds are no more meaningful, no more creative, and no more ambiguous (if that’s your thing) than sounds which are produced “artificially.” Sounds are sounds are sounds. Any waveform can be produced from combinations of other waveforms. So they are mathematically and physically identical.
“Mash ups” also have nothing to do with MIDI. You could make those entirely with analogue equipment if you want (or not do that, if that’s what you don’t want). Indeed, people already have used analogue equipment to mix recordings, so there’s nothing special about that. Does that mean using analogue equipment “ends up leading to endless ‘mash ups'”? I have no idea what that would mean, since they in fact did lead that way, in the form of the work some people have already produced. Are we talking as if there must be some kind of avoidable trend, inherent to producing any sort of music, which leads to that? If so, how’s that work and what’s making it happen? But again, why are we singling out “midi” or even “technology” as the alleged culprit, when those don’t seem to be playing any essential role in what you’re complaining about?
This is simply false, and very obviously so. MIDI was introduced in the ’80s and is just a kind of interface for computers. You think physical acoustics itself wasn’t around before that? Nobody knew about Fourier analysis?
MIDI does not require pure, single-frequency notes. Maybe you just don’t understand that. It’s digital, so it does require discrete time intervals, thus a finite number of frequencies are available. But that does not change anything about human perception or make any difference compared to acoustic instruments. That’s because we cannot perceive infinitesimally short lengths of time, and any instrument you make can only be made to a certain degree of precision, so none of them have infinite flexibility either (in terms of what notes or timbres or gradations of frequency they can perform). This idealized notion that “I can play anything at all” is just a fantasy, not how reality actually works.
Develop what powers? My handwriting is probably worse than it would’ve been, because I don’t need to write notes on paper very often anymore. On the other hand, my typing skills are better, as well as my ability to manage the software and file systems to make sure I’m producing what I want, as effectively and efficiently as possible. It also gives me audio feedback, so that I can know what the result is like without needing a big ensemble to waste their time, just so I can find out there’s an error in somewhere in the score. (This of course requires that I exercise some skill, in knowing that an ensemble in a particular environment will not sound exactly like the MIDI on my headphones.) I don’t know what makes you think any of that’s “easy,” and I don’t know what is supposed to be interfering with the really creative part of the process. If I’m not using a pencil and paper and an eraser, and not relying on the resources of a big ensemble to help me do some of my own work, am I less able to think of and create good music? Of course not, that’s just absurd.
False. With MIDI, you get to program it however you want. You are not locked in, the program is locked in, and it does whatever you tell it to do. On the other hand, with an acoustic instrument, the performance is locked to whatever an individual performer (and their instrument) happens to do at a given time and place. I don’t have any control over that. I’m completely locked out of the process as a composer, unless I’m doing all of the performing myself and can somehow be expected to perform flawlessly on a whim. But nobody can do that. And if you don’t want the computer to behave deterministically, you could introduce randomness into the process — by programming it that way!
It seems you’ve created this illusion for yourself that electronic music (since “MIDI” apparently isn’t the extent of your problem, but technology itself) all sounds like a video game and it must work a particular way. It doesn’t need to be like that at all. You haven’t even bothered to find out.
Mike,
I think we have a misunderstanding. First off, my example of MIDI is taken from Lanier – as Daniel has pointed out. I recognise and tried make clear that MIDI can be used in wonderful ways! Also, I am not interested in criticising technology qua technology. I don’t think there is anything good or bad in itself. What I am interested is in our relationship with technology. The effect it can have on us. This is not just modern technology but all technology as Plato discussed in Phaedrus (please see my dialogue with Geoff above as we cover some of your concerns there too). The worry I had in mind, simply put, is that when different activities become very simple individuals may tend to take the path of least resistance. There is no necessity in this and any technology can be used with a great degree of nuance. The problem it thoughtless use of technology not any particular technology in and of it self. I hope that clears up what I was trying to say.
Thanks for the comment.
Best,
Adam
Mike-
You seem to be taking the both the blog and the part of my comment that you quoted as a willful attack on technology, specifically MIDI and electronic music, but, to me, this piece didn’t read that way at all.
For one thing, I think that the author made clear above that he’s talking about tendencies encouraged by technology, not absolute determinism. Automation makes lots of routine tasks easier, faster and more accessible, but no one forces us to use it (except when they do). To stick with the now borderline myopic example of electronic music, there are very intuitive and accessible sequencers, samplers, and drum machines all bundled within increasingly easy to use DAWs. Far from being difficult or obscure, there are tons of people using these to make all kinds of music. Most have MIDI in/out, so any musician can record straight into them from home and get a pretty good result. What’s the upshot though? Well, in my perception of the landscape, it’s the ubiquity of programmed, mechanical drum beats, the same simple time signatures, repetitive effects, etc. Is the fact that this stuff abounds in nearly all genres of popular music (insofar as they can still be called different genres) because new software forces these qualities? No, of course you can still be creative with them, they just make it easier to get passable results without doing so, and they incline composers to build certain kinds of songs in certain kinds of ways rather than others. All technologies have constraints, sure, but different constraints. Your point about analogue glosses over the difference between possible and probable.
I have no real idea in what way Lanier might want revamp or replace MIDI; some of his irritations with it get rather technical (he’s a pretty advanced computer scientist and an accomplished musician, quite beyond my pay grade). However, I think I understand his concerns about MIDI being a fixed, computational definition of a musical note. It’s a reification of an idea of a note, which is a much different animal from normal standardization. For example, the OED is a form of standardization, but only as a reference. It can’t disallow the usage of novel, unsanctioned or contradictory definitions, and so we get new slang on a consistent basis. MIDI further cements its definition of a note with every program that’s written to depend on it, and thus becomes increasingly “locked in”. Unlike, say, natural languages, which we can freely adapt to the contexts in which we use them, MIDI must stay utterly unambiguous by necessity. Lanier is simply calling for a more versatile and humanistic method, one that doesn’t sacrifice an unbound human concept for the easily transferable but limited computational definition of a note. From his book:
“Before MIDI, a musical note was a bottomless idea that transcended absolute definition. It was a way for a musician to think, or a way to teach and document music. It was a mental tool distinguishable from the music itself. Different people could make transcriptions of the same musical recording, for instance, and come up with slightly different scores.
After MIDI, a musical note was no longer just an idea, but a rigid, mandatory structure you couldn’t avoid in the aspects of life that had gone digital. The process of lock-in is like a wave gradually washing over the rulebook of life, culling the ambiguities of flexible thoughts as more and more thought structures are solidified into effectively permanent reality.”
But if the technology in question doesn’t even resemble the descriptions of it, how is the author supposed to know what is allegedly encouraged by it?
Likewise, pretty much anybody can use other fairly intuitive pieces of technology (namely, every musical instrument ever created) and get a “pretty good result.”
Go back to 1945, then tell me how much popular music contained simple beats, little or no experimentation with time, and lots of repetition. Answer: the vast majority of it. Very nearly all of that was entirely analogue, using “traditional” instrumentation. So it apparently doesn’t matter whether it’s “high-tech” or “low-tech.” The difference just seems to be that a larger proportion of people have the means to create something which a larger audience will have a chance to hear, without the interference of pesky things like record companies and disk jockeys.
As I just said, I don’t think it does. If you listened to just one song from several decades ago, you would probably find folk and rock and pop and jazz musicians doing the exact same thing as you’re complaining about. We could even consider how things were a century or more ago, but as things get more distant, we have to account for bigger stylistic and cultural changes and exactly what the criticism is supposed to be about gets obscured.
I don’t know what it could even mean to have a “contradictory” note. Physics is the only constraint here, not anything about MIDI itself (or “computer-made music” generally). Give me an example of what you’re talking about, in any piece of music whatsoever. When I listen to something, I can tell you that it’s not just some idea floating in the ether — it’s the end result, the actual sensation of the physical vibration that is a sound. So I can only wonder what you’d be offering me. Physics that can’t be computed? “Sounds” that don’t exist except as ideas in your head?
Perhaps a distinction between ‘technik’ and ‘tool’ can be drawn? Tools are those extensions of our being, which are found outside of ourselves, which can be used to help us to survive and learn (pencils/books/hammers etc). Technology, or what should be called modern (automated) technology is that which takes out of the hands of the individual subject the capacity to create and replaces this with a means to act as a passive bystander in the very modalities which influence and effect existence.
Modern technology re-routes natural rhythm’s and turns them into means towards humanist ends. An example is Heidegger’s reference to the hydro-electric dam and how it commands the river, and therefore nature, to stop and go. It creates an artificial system of ebbs and flows and is predicated on ‘mans’ domination of the natural environment,
Of course there is a difference between sounds created out in the wild (birds, river flows, my hand banging on a drum or even me strumming a guitar) and sounds created outside of my individual actions through a computerized mechanism…..this is self evident.
Automated technology reduces primordial social experience to a series of clicks and posts and simplifies very complex processes of learning, subsequently making human beings lazy and more dependent on external authorities.
Facebook is a primary example. Here we have a data collecting facility, wherein all are afforded the ability to be willing participants in having their desires marketed to corporations and to be entrapped by the agents of state power (cops/military). Furthermore, if one were asked to give up all their passwords and keys to their home by a stranger they would most likely respond with contempt and disbelief. Yet with facebook, everyone wants to be the first to fit in in the raffle to give up the most information on themselves to a database monitored by agents of external authority and pretend like the latter is better than the former merely because they can deny that this is what is really going on precisely because of the level of alienation going on.
Marcuse was a genius and Adorno was spot on. Other writers like Wolfi Landstreicher, Bernard Steigler, Don Ihde, Michel Foucault, and even Derrida, took this up.
Technology isn’t this neutral entity which exists outside the individual subject to be utilized whenever for whatever. If it were, I would use my computer as a hammer or a streetcar as a home. With these devices come a set of social values and commands which gear beings towards and away from certain things. In this sense, there is no neutrality.
What’s ironic, is that I am writing this on a computer, completely removed from those to whom I am writing and thus exposes the contradiction with which I am faced. We are all products of state-capitalist techno-biology, yet we don’t have to be.
Adorno’s ‘culture industry’ is a good starting point for getting at this issue.
Makhno,
I think a distinction can be drawn but I don’t think I would want to draw it where you do. Instead I would want to draw the distinction in the way Aristotle did between ‘techne’ and ‘praxis’ and ‘phronesis’. That is any technology including writing (see my response to Geoff where I discuss Plato’s Phaedrus). In this way it is not necessarily about this or that tool/piece of technology but rather about or relation with it, our ability to use practical wisdom (phronesis) to decide how and what kind of action (praxis) to take – what kind of life we are going to live. So this does have a lot to do with automation and the administration of society but I don’t think that is necessarily something new with modern technology. We are always in danger of succumbing to immaturity and thoughtlessness.
Also let me add Gadamer to your list. For example:
“The real difficulty in the relation of theory and practice does not arise from this new function of science as a technological force, but rather from the fact that we are no longer able to distinguish between practical and technical power. Yet even a civilization that has been rendered scientific is not granted dispensation from practical questions. Therefore a peculiar danger arises when the process of scientification transgresses the limit of technical questions, without, however, departing from the level of rationality confined to the technological horizon. For then no attempt is made to attain a rational consensus on the part of citizens concerning the practical control of their destiny. Its place is taken by the attempt to attain technical control over history by perfecting the administration of society, an attempt that is just as impractical as it is unhistorical (Gadamer, “Dogmatism, Reason, and Decision” p. 255)
Thanks for the comment.
Best,
Adam
A fundamental difference between software based ‘musical’ technology and a guitar is that the former is a pre-programmed database of options (as in someone else laboured to create these options) or sequences of sounds which merely need to be assembled by someone clicking on one or the other and with the latter the actual musical content can’t be pre-programmed. One must reconfigure themselves physiologically to understand how to create music with a guitar through copious amounts of practice, whereas with garbage like auto-tune anyone can just click on one thread/sound/stream and then another and say ‘here’s some music’.
“the former is a pre-programmed database of options (as in someone else laboured to create these options) or sequences of sounds which merely need to be assembled by someone clicking on one or the other and with the latter the actual musical content can’t be pre-programmed.”
Nonsense. While all software synthesisers do ship with preset sounds, barely any self respecting electronic artist would use them for fear of being caught out. All soft synths have an “initialise” patch (usually a constant sine wave) from which a custom sound can be created by tweaking the settings. Modern synths have a dizzying number of parameters resulting in essentially a limitless number of configurations. Try to programme a soft synth and make a decent sound; it’s not easy.
I really liked the articulated difference between a community and a crowd. I find that in the effort to be egalitarian, non-partisan, and generally unbiased, we in American shy away from developing communities for fear of alienating others because they have different passions, interests, or values. I am not going to soap box here, but I feel as though many of the complex modern societal problems we have could be ameliorated simply by transitioning back to a community mindset. This crowd mindset in America of having to compete and outdo everyone else to get a head certainly isn’t motivating the bottom half of society since they are already so far behind. But I am probably too young and too naive to comment on the negative forces which plague our society.
This MIDI debate is the biggest load of nonsense I’ve ever read in my life. How many of you actually know anything whatsoever about electronic music production? Have you actually tried to write computer music? I can tell by the way you talk about “MIDI” that you have no clue whatsoever. I tell you what – you should download the demo of Ableton 9 and come back here in 10 minutes after you’ve mastered it and written a a piece of music that others will enjoy. Because “MIDI” really DOES make it THAT easy! What a load of rubbish.
Yeah, I’ve worked with Ableton, Reason, FL, Studio One, and some others. Not sure where you’re going with that, but it sounds like you’ve managed to miss pretty much every point that’s been made so far here.
“The point” seems to be morphing as the debate goes on, but there can be no debate as to the contents of the original article:
“…we no longer have to struggle to learn an instrument properly or learn the different capabilities of instruments, and we are stuck with the discrete mathemitized notes (in the case of MIDI).”
This is utter nonsense.
I’ve been teaching myself digital music production for over a decade and at the rate technology is changing I do not expect to ever “master” this most complex of musical instruments. I have also played the guitar for nearly 20 years. You cannot learn either instrument (the computer or guitar) without investing significant effort; natural talent accelerates the learning process. However, in my view, the guitar is limited in its musical/creative capabilities whereas the computer is limitless.
It really is utter nonsense. The BS about precise midi notes is eye rollingly out of touch.
MIDI stands for musical instrument digital interface. It’s a standardized interface. Some genius, very early on, realized that musicial instruments could be command devices to computers in exactly the same way that a qwerty keyboard is… and that if there were a standard cross platform way for musicial instruments to “talk” to computers, well, that would be awesome. (Think about it… Mac and Windows machines are only just now able to use the same damn computer printers and admit it, when you print to an apple printer from a windows system you wince and pray) … yet a midi Saxophone or Piano will use midi to talk to either a mac or pc machine glitchlessly, and has for two decades! We take it for granted but it’s incredible!
MIDI doesn’t actually have anything to do with “notes” precise or otherwise.
Pressing a key on an ordinary piano makes a hammer strike a string producing a sound… but if the keyboard is midi enabled pressing the key sends a digital signal (a trigger) to some software to do _something_ … it doesn’t even have to be a musical something… you could play colored fog from a colored fog dispenser if you have it hooked up to receive midi instructions… or you could turn on your toaster when you play middle c.
MIDI liberates a midi enabled instrument from producing a limited set of musical tones and instead makes it a triggering device that triggers whatever it is you have set up to be triggered.
In it’s earliest implementation MIDI instructions generally triggered a limited palette of electronic tones. MIDI came to be associated with that sound, — the Pacman soundtrack sound — but that sound is no more integral to MIDI than the Wright Flyer design is integral to aircraft design.
For some reason I can’t edit or request deletion of my comment above — isn’t that standard? … I’d like to edit the ‘bitchy internet pedant’ out of my tone… *sigh* oh well —
Good topic, one that I believe philosophers should be taking seriously.
It is hard to argue against the leverage and utility mobile technology offer. As a tool it makes life easier.
As a creative device ( mobile music composer, painting or drawing app for example) it has little to no value for a serious artist. Creativity and expression in a serious artistic endeavor requires selection of the proper mediums for the desired project. Most serious artists will scoff at using mediums on a mobile device. Mobile artistic mediums do have value as practice tools (for instrumentalist like me).
People should be interested in genuine ways of self expression and creativity not rooted in the architecture of Facebook or the operating system of a mobile device. Automation has taken away our physical photo albulms
Technology is making this podcast possible. The mobile device is arguably the most powerful tool the average person has (granting it is a smartphone). However it is ultimately a computer
Continued from above……hit send accidentally.
Moderation is key with technology use. Too much involvement in technology and your digital life takes over, depreciating your enjoyment of the simple pleasures of life and separating you from meaningful relationships. Too little technology and you’ll be doing tasks you could have done faster and with less effort using the mobile device.
There is a place for technology (with all its features and capacity it may be the most powerful thing the average person owns), but a true artist or someone interested in creative self expression should realize that your intricacies and ideas won’t be captured within the template of Facebook or the applications on a mobile device.
There is no substitute for getting your hands dirty and putting the brush to the canvas, by doing the activity, by struggling and learning the discipline of an artform the self finds a more lasting contentment and a deeper sense of meaning.
We should all turn our phones and TVs off for awhile and disconnect ourselves from the digital world. Some of us (me included) have become complacent and lazy, impatiently awaiting our next spoonful of digital glue that is sure to keep the phone even closer to our hip.
Don’t settle for the templates of expression and interaction social media give you. Technology should serve people and not act to stifle and atrophy the imagination, individuality, and zest for life inherent in all of us.